Originally Posted by
YYJ _SLF
Fair points for sure.
I have no idea how the new AP points regime will impact the dynamic pricing of AP redemptions going forward.
My WAG is that SEs will get a larger share of the total points pool than they did in the past but I don't know if the total pool will be larger or smaller than it was in the past which will drive redemption costs.
My intuition is that the total pool will be smaller and that redemption costs will drop in absolute terms going forward but I could be completely wrong.
Our two most typical J lowest trips are YYJ-YWG -YYJ which were roughly 1,500 SQD and 4,000 SQM and AP points in the old regime. In the new regime, they will be roughly 6,000 SQC and 9,000 AP points. The other one is YYJ-LHR-YYJ which was roughly 5,000 SQD and 15,000 SQM and AP points in the old regime and roughly 20,000 SQC and 30,000 AP points in the new regime.
There is definitely an optimisation strategy where my wife and I could use redemptions and PRs for some travel while accumulating enough SQCs to be able to gift E25K, E35K and E50K to the rest of our family sharing pool while still maximising the AP points that our family sharing pool accumulates with 2 SEs, 2 E25Ks, 2 E35Ks and 2 E50Ks.
The optimisation problem just became much harder because of choice. I am sure that AC/AP designed the program to make it more difficult for members to extract the maximum value from the program which is a sound commercial decision.
I am prepared to make sub optimal decisions in 2026 if I can learn to make optimal decisions in 2027 onwards.
Even if we ignore the existence of PRs completely as an option, you don't seem to derive any benefit at all from choosing SQC if you're earning ~140,000 SQC organically. Assuming you select the status for a friend options at 70k, 90k, and 130k, and you chose the SQC options for every other milestone where available, you'd get an additional 17,500 SQC. The only thing this additional SQC gets you is hitting the 150k and (maybe) 160k milestones. And the only thing that gives you is some combo of a $250GC, 10,000AP, 15,000AP, and 4 Status Passes. I don't believe there is any combination of those benefits that you couldn't get from simply choosing them at earlier milestones instead of the SQC.
For example, I'd probably pick the $250 GC at 150k and the 15,000AP at 160k. But if you selected AP points instead of SQC at each milestone (other than the status FaF milestones), you'd have 45,000 AP, which I'd say is more valuable than $250 + 15,000 AP. (Before the thread gets bogged down discussing whether 30,000 AP is or isn't worth more/less than $250, the point is moot because the value of 6 PRs is an order of magnitude more valuable even if you put zero effort into optimizing their use.)
I agree the new program complicates things and makes it harder to optimize, but I think one thing is pretty clear is that it doesn't make sense to select the SQC benefits in bulk unless need to do so in order to hit SE, possibly to hit 50K FaF at 130k, or a banked year of SE at 200k. You're going to hit the first two organically and choosing additional SQC isn't going to get you to the latter.